The oldest homes in Vilano Beach date to the motor-court era of the late 1940s and 1950s, small block and frame construction built along Vilano Road when the town was still weekend cottages and tourist courts. Decades of salt air, direct sun, and barrier-island wind take a specific toll: stucco and block crack and spall at the reinforcing steel, single-pane windows and older sliders fail years before their inland equivalents, and roofs run on a shorter clock. It shows up first on the ocean-facing side of a house.
A lot of Vilano Beach sits in FEMA AE and VE flood zones, and St. Johns County's floodplain office can pull the exact zone and base flood elevation for any parcel. That matters for renovation math: under the NFIP's substantial improvement rule, once the cost of work on a structure reaches half its market value, the whole building has to be brought up to current flood elevation requirements, not just the room being remodeled. On an older cottage that's often the real decision: whether a kitchen or bath job stays a straightforward remodel, or tips the project into an elevation or a rebuild. We flag that early rather than after a permit gets kicked back.
A good share of Vilano Beach's houses are still used as second homes or weekend places, and a real chunk of our work is converting one into a full-time residence: updated insulation, HVAC sized for year-round use, a kitchen built for daily cooking instead of a week at a time.
Vilano Beach also carries its own overlay districts, the North Coastal Overlay District and the Vilano Beach Town Center Overlay in the county's land development code, so exterior and street-facing work here can mean a stop at the North Coastal Design Review Board on top of standard permitting. It's a volunteer board that meets monthly and checks a project against the overlay code. The town itself dates to the 1920s land boom, when developer August Heckscher built the Grand Vilano Casino on the beach; a 1937 storm ended that building, but the small grid of streets and lots from that era is still the bones of the neighborhood.
Common priorities in Vilano Beach
- Converting seasonal cottages into full-time homes
- Flood-zone renovation planning ahead of the substantial-improvement threshold
- Exterior and envelope repair on older motor-court-era cottages
Services available in Vilano Beach
In Vilano Beach we handle whole-house renovations, additions, kitchen and bathroom remodels, and exterior restoration, sized for the small lots and older cottages on San Pablo Island as well as the newer construction going up around them. We also coordinate flood-zone and overlay-district permitting as general contractor, so a project doesn't stall between the county's floodplain office and the Design Review Board.
Priority service
Home Additions in Vilano Beach
A lot of Vilano Beach's original cottages are small, built for weekend use rather than a full-time household. We add square footage, a second story, or a rear addition, sized to fit narrow barrier-island lots and cleared through the North Coastal Overlay District where the project calls for it.
Priority service
Custom Interiors in Vilano Beach
Interiors here often need to shed a beach-house-for-a-week layout for one built for daily living: real storage, a working entry off the beach side, materials that hold up to salt air and sandy feet. We design and build that out room by room or as a full interior renovation.
Priority service
Exterior Renovation in Vilano Beach
Stucco, siding, windows, and roofing all age faster on the ocean side of San Pablo Island than a few miles inland. We handle exterior renovation as its own project or alongside interior work, since the two often turn up in the same house at the same time.
Interior remodeling
Kitchen Remodeling in Vilano Beach
Kitchens in the older Vilano cottages were built for a small vacation household, not year-round cooking. We rebuild the layout, cabinetry, and ventilation for daily use, and account for flood-zone requirements on ground-level kitchens where they apply.
Interior remodeling
Bathroom Remodeling in Vilano Beach
Bathrooms in these older homes often carry the worst of the humidity and salt exposure in the house. We rebuild them properly, waterproofing, ventilation, and fixtures suited to a coastal climate, whether it's one bath or every bathroom in the house.
What to prepare before a consultation
Before a first consultation, it helps to know a few basics about the property: roughly how old the house is, whether major systems or past additions have already been replaced, and what you've noticed going wrong, whether that's a sticking door, a soft spot in a floor, or a section of exterior that's weathered ahead of the rest. If you know your flood zone or have a recent survey or elevation certificate, bring it. A lot of renovation decisions in Vilano Beach come down to how much work a structure can take before the substantial improvement rule applies, and having that number early saves time.
It also helps to think through how you actually use the house, or want to use it. A weekend cottage being converted to a full-time home needs different systems than one staying a seasonal property, and that changes the scope of the work. If the project touches the exterior or is visible from the street, expect it to go through the county's North Coastal Design Review Board in addition to standard permitting, so a rough sense of your timeline matters too.
How Wilson & Co keeps the work clear
We work as general contractor and designer on the same project, so decisions about layout, materials, and budget happen in one place instead of getting relayed between separate firms. On a Vilano Beach project that also means one point of contact for the county's floodplain review and the North Coastal Design Review Board, instead of you managing that coordination yourself.
You get a defined scope and price before work starts, and we tell you plainly when something, an unexpected flood-zone requirement, a rotted structural member behind the drywall, changes that scope, rather than letting it show up as a surprise on an invoice.